Hurricane Season Could Worsen Oil Spill Damage

As the first tendrils of British Petroleum's massive Deepwater
Horizon oil gusher lapped up on the bayous and beaches of coastal
Louisiana, observers warned of a possible threat that could
drastically add to the spill's destructive potential: hurricane
storm surge. "If a hurricane encounters the oil slick now covering
parts of the Gulf of Mexico, the result could be devastating,
scientists say," National Public Radio reported on May 21
("Hurricane,
Oil Spill Could Be Troubling Mix," by Jon Hamilton).
This year's hurricane season officially starts June 1. But
forecasters already had their eye on a low pressure system off
Bermuda on May 20, according to New Jersey's Gloucester County
Times ("First
tropical storm of season may be brewing in Atlantic," by John
Barna). Meanwhile, the slowly spreading oil slick had touched on
barrier islands at the edge of the Gulf, as reported by the New
Orleans Times-Picayune ("A
month after explosion, oil from Gulf of Mexico spill washes ashore
in populated areas," by Paul Rioux): "A month to the day after
an April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sent
oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the first oil washed ashore
Thursday in populated areas from Port Fourchon to the western edge
of Grand Isle. 'It's not sheen. It's not tar balls. It's thick,
nasty oil,' Jefferson Parish Councilman Tom Capella said. 'It's
like when you were a kid and stuck your finger in the brownie
mix.'" The Boston Globe's "Big Picture" blog has large-format
photographs of the oil slick here ("Oil
reaches Louisiana shores").

"Kerry St. Pé, director of the Barataria-Terrebonne
National Estuary Program in Thibodaux, La., which was hit by storm
surges from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, says a storm surge
would carry oil over the wetlands and deposit it farther inland,"
reports USA Today ("Hurricane
season may make spill worse," by Oren Dorell).
Clickto watch video

Storm surge overruns beachfront roads in
Gulfport, Mississippi, on September 1, 2008, in this Associated Press
video. Scientists fear a similar hurricane surge could
contaminate large areas of Gulf Coast with oil from the British
Petroleum gusher, which has been out of control for a
month.
Even without a hurricane, ecologist's fear the impact on
Louisiana's coastal wetlands may be disastrous. But throw a major
hurricane into the mix, and the results could be almost as
catastrophic to the human habitat. National Geographic has the
story here ("Hurricane
Could Push Spilled Gulf Oil Into New Orleans," by Christine
Dell'Amore): "'Say the oil spill remained and [another] Katrina
hit,' said Nan Walker, a physical oceanographer at Louisiana State
University (LSU) in Baton Rouge. 'The oil could be propelled onto
land by the storm surge and monster waves.' Ron Kendall, chair of
the Department of Environmental Toxicology at Texas Tech University
in Lubbock, made a more dire prediction: 'You put a major hurricane
in there, you’re liable to have oil in downtown New
Orleans.'"
So far, the idea is just a disaster-movie scenario. But even the
perceived risk of oil contamination has already begun to affect at
least one local real estate market, according the Panama City
(Florida) News-Herald ("Potential
home buyers eye oil slick," by Scarlet Sims). Reports the
paper, "Second home buyers are watching the growing oil slick in
the Gulf of Mexico and asking for guarantees before buying a Bay
County beach home, Realtors say...Several Realtors and brokers
report home buyers are either shying away from buying homes on the
beach or requiring a 60-day guarantee that oil won’t impact
the beach before signing on the dotted line."
And if private homes or other property are damaged by oil from
the BP gusher, the damage most likely won't be covered by private
insurance policies. A Louisiana court ruled last month that typical
"pollution exclusion" language written into most homeowners
insurance didn't apply to the Chinese drywall situation —
precisely because those exclusions are clearly intended for another
purpose: that is, to keep insurance companies off the hook for
damage caused by industrial pollution like the Deepwater Horizon
disaster.